Oldest Fort Built By Europeans In U.S.
Interior
Spanish 'San Juan' Garrison, Found In North
Carolina
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North Carolina: Before
there was Roanoke, Jamestown, or Plymouth, there was Spain's
Fort San Juan. Built by
gold-hunting conquistadors in the 1567, it is the oldest
European garrison found in the U.S. interior.

Recently, archaeologists
uncovered the fort's remains.

In
1540, Hernando de Soto led a Spanish army up the eastern
edge of the Appalachian mountains through present-day
Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. This expedition
recorded the first European contact with the people of Joara, which de Soto's chroniclers called Xuala.

In December 1566, Governor Pedro Menéndez
de Avilés ordered Captain Juan Pardo to leave Spanish
Florida and claim the interior for Spain. Pardo and
his 125 men were told to pacify the natives, convert them to
Catholicism, and establish a route to Spanish silver mines
near Zacatecas, Mexico. (The Spanish thought they
were much closer to the mines than they were)

The garrison was built by
Captain Pardo and his men in about 1567 at the Native
American site of Joara (today's Morganton, N.C.) Built
300 miles inland, Fort San Juan is believed to be the first
and largest fort in Pardo's attempt to colonize the American
South.

The base of the Spanish moat, part of a garrison
nearly 450 years old

It's also the only one to
have been discovered.

"Fort San Juan and six
others that together stretched from coastal South Carolina
into eastern Tennessee were occupied for less than
18 months before the Native
Americans destroyed them, killing all but one of the Spanish
soldiers who manned the garrisons," said archaeologist Robin Beck
from the University of Michigan.

"We have known for more
than a decade where the Spanish soldiers were living,"
said another excavator, Christopher Rodning of Tulane University.

The team of archaeologists
was investigating a Mississippian mound at the site
when their excavations inadvertently exposed part of
the fort.

"For all of us, it was an
incredible moment," Rodning said.

Along with
excavations, researchers used techniques like magnetometry to probe the site. This
enabled them to detect
features buried below the surface. This included the fort's
graveled entryway and V-shaped moat, which measures
5.5 feet deep and
15 feet across.

Among the artifacts
found at the site were nails, tacks, pottery and an iron
clothing hook for fastening a jacket or attaching a sword
scabbard to a belt.

As for the size of the
fort, the researchers are not sure.

"We are not yet sure of
the fort's dimensions. That will be one of the surprises,"
Beck said. The team has exposed about 60 feet
of the 15-foot-across moat.
They suspect another
100 feet of moat or palisade
will link up with the now-exposed section.

The Spaniards were
prospecting for gold while they occupied the site,
but they never found the goldmines that made North
Carolina's settlers of the early 1800s
rich. Archaeologists
believe the colonizers' downfall was due to their
presumptions about trading with Native Americans.

"The soldiers believed
that when their gifts were accepted, it meant that the
native people were their subjects," Beck said. "But to the natives, it was simply an exchange.
When the soldiers ran out of gifts, they expected the
natives to keep on feeding them. By that time, they had also
committed what Spanish documents refer to as 'indiscretions'
with native women, which may have been another reason that
native men decided they had
to go. So food and sex were probably two of the main reasons
for destroying Spanish settlements and forts."

An iron clothing hook
was among Spanish artifacts found at the site

England exploited Spain's
failure when they established Jamestown in 1607.
This set in motion the American frontier narrative in our
history books today.

"For Native Americans ... this was the beginning of a long-term and often
tragic reshaping of their precolonial world," said
archaeologist David Moore Moore.

The crew suspects the
site will yield more discoveries.

"We also think we've
identified a blockhouse or casa fuerte inside the
fortifications, and this is where the soldiers would have
stored their supplies — ammunition, tools, food, etc.," Beck
shares. "In the field seasons to come, we'll focus on
getting a much better understanding of this fort."

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